Palm Shores to Daytona.

Gosh! How could I possibly have forgotten to write the blog last night???

I know...We anchored and I made coffee and grabbed my book and went up onto the fly deck where there was an excellent breeze.
Lets go back to Leaving Palm Shores.

Why do I take these sunrise and sunset photos? Well, I am always interested to see what the end of the day brings, and what the beginning brings in turn. I love the colors and clouds in the sky and find them fascinating.  This is the sun rising on Palm Shores. The heat came on pretty quickly, I can tell you. We woke around 6.15, and before the alarm. It was warm downstairs, so it was a relief to come upstairs and open up the salon windows and doors and survey the world as we see it.;

The morning coffee worked it's magic and we were up-anchor and away by the time the worms stared gnawing and breakfast was in order.  Scrambled eggs are easiest and fastest to make, along with hash browns and the tomato we tend to have with every breakfast. We love the little Campari brand tomatoes...if you haven't tried them..do!

As you can see, we are travelling almost due north.

This inside passage on the AICW finds us going through and under plenty of bridges of all kinds. Most are 50-65ft above us, but some we have to ask for an opening. Shorties we have  managed were between 21 and 24 feet in the last day or two, and we only had to lower the tall aerials to get under them comfortably. I love how the different cities accommodate the fisher folk, and provide lovely jetty out into the Indian River

We are now joined by many yachts going north for the summer. They are coming out of the little and large marina on the River and telling us they are off to Nantucket, predominantly.

It is interesting, having done this route once before, how often we say to each other..."I remember this!"...We will start on a particular stretch of waterway and memories will come flooding back to incidents, or the fact that the river was full of Dolphin/Manatee etc.

We entered the Haulover Canal and followed this large Cat through. There were so many people enjoying the calm waters in the canal, and the HUGE number of Manatee we saw was just fantastic.

 At the end of the Haulover Canal is a sharp left turn along all the little islands; many mangrove swamp kind of islands. How apt is the name "Mosquito Lagoon"!

 The area is so shallow, you see people standing in the water, everywhere, which gives me quite a chuckle. Just tells us how shallow it is outside the designated channel, and we had better stick to it!

Folks were out fishing!...yes, standing in the water. White sandy bottom, and it looked so refreshing compared to the heat on the fly bridge!

 It really is very hard to convey the sense of what this looks like in real life, when seen on the chart. Imagine that all those little islands are sandy and covered with some vegetation of some kind...in the chart it is designated swamp. That is our boat in the middle. The long blue fingers on the top left are residential canals.

 Shallow, anyone?

 As we are passing all those little islands on our right, this is what is found on our left...on terra firma, in other words. Rv parks, double-wide trailer parks...permanent residences for snowbirds, no doubt, as so many of them looked locked away for the summer. They are all front and center on the Indian River/AICW

 We dubbed these two brothers, (perhaps unfairly, but...) the Hillbilly Brothers. Good reasons for this! They kept their bino's trained on the back deck (cockpit) of the boat, and got pretty close to us to view what was out back...we don't know why, coz it was mostly just 'stuff'. They kept pace with us for a long time...about 15 miles all told, and kept doing circuits and bumps around us, looking us up and down all the way.  The brother in front was fishing...off and on. I asked them why their flag (this is Memorial Day, remember!) was dragging in the water??? They told me the boat didn't have a taller flag pole, in reply! as good an answer as any, I guess :)

Fortunately all this area was a slow wake area, and for good reason. The dolphin were so plentiful, ant it was obviously a nursery area for Manatee and Dolphin. Manatee were everywhere, and people were very respectful of their space and presence.
I love that Osprey will nest almost anywhere tall. This house is well endowed:)

 The father in this boat was more attentive to his GoPro camera, that you can see mounted just above his head, and what was happening on his IPad. It was disconcerting to see him come VERY close to the boat at times, because he was too busy filming the two boys in the donut.

 We just love that people plonk themselves down in the middle of a sandbar in their deck chairs, someone fishes, others swim, and generally have a great time. We were rather jealous! One day!

 The 'hood ornaments' as Waz called them, were plentiful, and I have lots of photos of them, but this one took the prize for most balletic! The young man on the back looked rather beautiful, truth be told, but we wondered if he would get tossed if they had to go over a wave, because the captain is very engrossed in his phone, on the left.

Lots of puppies out too...good to see people value their dogs and include them in the wet fun.

 All this is in and around New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The Atlantic is on the right of the chart. Look how much water we have under us!!! 19.1ft! woohoo!:)
Also notice we are absolutely at crawling speed...this being a no wake zone.

What a glorious place to live and play!

Plenty of folks out on the water's edge restaurants, and we again felt just a little bit jealous that time and circumstances meant we couldn't go there too. Nowhere to anchor, but also we have to be out of Florida! Ack!

Some lovely homes. Yes, I know you might get sick of some of these, but they really do show the lifestyle...and homes such as this are not expensive by NZ standards. We went and looked! lol. this one wouldn't meet our criteria though...no pool! (sheesh, are we getting picky, or what!!!):)

 The light house at New Smyrna Beach. The place was an absolute zoo. No other way to explain the myriad boats, great and small that were out on the waterways, and parked any way they could, in the shallows, to allow the occupants to disembark and stand, sit or swim in the water.

 These folks were trying to decide what to do with the stingray they caught. I hope they cut it loose! It was rather distressed, as you might imagine.

More wall to wall boats and people in New Smyrna Beach! We just cant get over the numbers. Flabbergasting!

 We were followed into Daytona Beach by plenty of fast boats all out to pass us and leave us rocking in their wake.

I just had to throw in this photo of a waterside mansion in Daytona, with a backdrop of a tall condo complex.

It was a little tricky to get into, but we did it. We had to approach the anchorage from the main channel, then sidle along the bridge (the chart isn't correct) and then make our way SLOWLY into that little pool of 11ft of water. We were followed in there at sunset, by the boat (boat?) in the next photo.

Three youngish males tried coming in the obvious way, but got stuck on the sand bar that we avoided. Finally, I guess they called the bridge for instructions and were told to go the way we did into the anchorage. They did get stuck on the sand, however, as we notice they didn't turn with the wind! No accommodation on the boat, other than the camper. We were not very happy with their anchoring apparatus. A small anchor attached to a short rope. We hoped not to find them alongside us in the night. That might have been much fun!

I decided to go back upstairs with my coffee, but having to open dirty windows meant I had to clean them, then as I was cleaning them, I may as well do some conditioning cream as well...so the whole of the back of the plastics got conditioned...it was hot work, but satisfying, as I had been intending to do it for some time. Good to get that done, and have dinner up top with a fab. view, and relax out back with our post dinner coffee and watch the sun set. A perfect end to an interesting day.

A rather oily looking sun set. Cool breezes, which were perfect, and it was warm again in the bedroom. Not to worry...We can enjoy aircon tomorrow night!